Meet the Cooperative Middle School Mathletes

Thursday

“Ever since I was a little kid, in the car I’d practice counting,” the eighth-grader from Brentwood said, adding, doing math problems, “all just fits together really nicely and it makes sense. It’s very predictable and concrete because nothing else is that predictable.”

Her affinity for math has Sides preparing to compete from May 12 to 15 the 2018 Raytheon Mathcounts National Competition in Washington, D.C. “I’ve never seen determination like Jocelyn,” her teacher and coach Julie Buckless said of Sides journey to the national competition, which the middle schooler set as a personal goal a year ago.

Mathcounts is a national program that provides middle school students the opportunity to compete in live, in-person contests against and alongside their peers. The program has four levels of competition— school, chapter, state and national. Each level of competition is comprised of four rounds— Sprint, Target, Team and Countdown Round.

Sides is one of four eighth-graders at the Cooperative Middle School who recently competed at both the regional and statewide Mathcounts competition. She placed first at the regional level in the individual level, and second individually at the state, which earned her one of four spots statewide to go to the national competition which will be held at the Renaissance Washington DC Downtown Hotel.

She will be among 224 final Mathletes from across the country.

The team from CMS, which has been together all three years of middle school, includes Sides, Anjali Joseph, of Exeter, Sean Cheng, of Exeter, and Jamie O’Keefe, of Stratham. As a team, the group placed second at the regional competition and third out of 18 teams at the state competition. The competition does not include a next step for teams, only individuals.

Buckless has been coaching the Mathcounts team at CMS for the past 12 years and said this team is one of the best she’s worked with.

“They work well as a team, with a lot of mutual respect,” she said. “To come in third in the state is phenomenal.”

Students on the Mathcounts team get together weekly with Buckless during the school year to prepare. They also have had help from retired doctor Karl Singer. The group started with a dozen students, of which the top eight went to the regionals, and then the top four went to the states.

While much of the work focuses on sample problems and rounds, Buckless also coaches the students on how they perceive their own ability to both do math and compete. While a student may be the strongest in a subject in their class or even at the regional contest, there are other students equally strong in math out there.

“Eventually you’re going to be up there with peers who are as great as you,” Buckless said, adding she tells her students that others also worry about their abilities at a competition. “Everybody feels this way. It’s supposed to be hard.”

Anjali Joseph, of Exeter, said as the oldest child in her family, her parents helped instill a love of math from an early age. “I kind of like to connect things together,” she said of why she likes math. “It’s mostly about piecing things together and finding the solution on your own.”

Though she was a bit nervous at the competition, she tried to follow advice from Jocelyn who told her to just do her best.

Jamie O’Keefe, of Stratham, explained that he enjoys how different parts of math tie into each other.

“There’s a lot of patterns and everything kind of clicks into place, everything has a purpose,” he said.

O’Keefe said he tried not to get his hopes up at the regional and state competitions, which helped him to stay grounded.

Sean Cheng, of Exeter, acknowledged that his main competition is the New Hampshire National Geographic Bee, where he placed second last year after 25 tie breaker questions against a student from Bedford. Cheng has qualified again this year for the Geography Bee, as did the boy he went up against last year.

“I just live in a small town in New Hampshire and I want to open up my mind to the world," he said. "I travel a lot too, traveling was what opened my mind to geography.”

When it comes to math, Cheng enjoys the feeling he gets when he solves a problem. He also works well under pressure, and faced Sides and O’Keefe in the speed round, beating both of them. “It was just fast-paced, head to head,” he explained.

Sides is now working with the state coach and getting ready to travel to Washington, D.C. with her mother and sister.

Those who would like to follow Sides at the competition, can look for the live webcast on Monday, May 14 at 10 a.m. at www.mathcounts.org.

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